Page 14 of Blood Curse

I tapped once.

“Can the Crown make you command me?”

I tested the cold pressure around my throat. It could use my mouth, but nothing inside me reached for Lenora’s blood. There was no answering path to seize.

Two tapped.

Stellan nodded. “She can’t command you. The Crown reaches royal blood and vampires tied to the court. You’re outside both.”

Lenora’s mouth tightened. “Then I interrupt if either of you loses control, and it can’t order me to stop.”

One tap.

“If she can’t signal?” Stellan asked.

Lenora looked directly at me. “We assume she’s still conscious. Silence doesn’t become permission because the Crown took her finger too.”

I tapped once.

“And if you’re unconscious?” she continued. “We protect your life, remove immediate danger and wait on every choice that can wait.”

Another tap.

The Crown released my spine. I folded forwards, catching myself with both hands.

Stellan waited until I reached for him. Then his palm settled between my shoulder blades.

Air returned in a hard rush. My muscles ached as if I had held them rigid for hours rather than seconds. The Crown gave me no sense of frustration or defeat. It simply withdrew and waited, confident it would have another chance.

“That’s the first safeguard,” I said when my breath steadied. “The signal.”

“The second is every command,” Lenora said. “Stellan tells us the moment he feels one.”

His hand stilled against my back. “Saying it aloud might make the Crown punish her.”

I met his eyes. “Hiding it leaves the Crown alone with the truth.”

“I know.”

“No deciding which orders I can cope with.”

“No deciding for you.” His answer was immediate. “I’ll name the words, the pull and whether my body has started to obey.”

Lenora closed the case. “If Bryony signals possession, we keep speaking to her. If Stellan names a command, I interrupt without treating him as the enemy. No one touches the Crown again until we know how to break the magic holding it.”

“And no putting Stellan on the other side of the room just in case,” I said.

Lenora met my gaze. “Response time matters.”

“So does remembering who the danger is. The Crown is using him. I won’t help it by treating him like another weapon to manage.”

Stellan’s thumb brushed the back of my neck, careful of my hair. “I’ll accept safeguards Bryony helps choose. I won’t accept being contained around her.”

Lenora considered us, then nodded once. “Fine. You stay close because you both chose it. If an order changes that, we respond to the order.”

“Those are safeguards,” I said.

“I’m relieved we settled the terminology.”